(Courtesy Photo)
Aryn Sanderson
arynsanderson@gmail.com
Ryan Duschak is tired of hearing the same question over and over again.
“Have you ever killed anybody?”
Duschak, a business administration senior, was an Army Ranger with the 2nd Ranger Battalion, the Army’s elite infantry and special operations unit.
After a high school class presentation in June 2000, Duschak made the “split-second decision” to abandon his plans to go to San Diego State and join the Army instead. Approximately 15 months after that decision, while he was training in Germany, 9/11 happened.
Four months later, Duschak went to Afghanistan for his first tour at 19. From 2002 to 2004, he did two more tours to Afghanistan and one to Iraq, usually for approximately three to four months at a time.
Duschak was in Iraq in 2003 at the beginning of the war.
“We were busy,” he said, showing off a trademark dry sense of humor.
Consequently, most Cal Poly students probably wouldn’t want to know the real answer to their question: “Have you ever killed anybody?”
“I like fucking with people when they ask that one,” Duschak said. “I look them in the face and say ‘Just women and children,’ really seriously. And they look at me and don’t know if I’m messing around, then I say I’m just kidding.”
Jokes aside, people would be foolish to think his bullets never landed in bodies, Duschak said.
“I shot at people, and yeah I hope they died,” he said. “Obviously, if anybody shoots at you, you’re going to try to eliminate the enemy. But it’s not like every day you’re getting in crazy firefights. You walk around and walk around and walk around, and fly around and fly around.”
Duschak paused.
“Then one day, you go shoot six, seven hundred rounds with your machine gun,” he said. “At the end of that ambush, which happened in late July, I was just sitting there like, ‘Wow.’ That was a defining day for sure. That was some intense shit.”
War changes those who fight it, he said.
“I don’t think it can’t,” Duschak said. “You make peace with dying before you even go over there.”
But Duschak didn’t come home in a body bag. He returned from the war in 2004 without physical injury.
“When I got out in 2004, the war was the hottest topic,” he said. “It was hard to be in that atmosphere of having people so raw and emotional, being in a sense against the war. You still have dust on your fucking shoes from being overseas, and it’s like ‘Dude, what do you know about anything?’ It was definitely a weird transition.”
It wasn’t until five years later that Duschak felt ready to go to school again. For those five years, he made music, played a lot of poker, bought a house, sold a house and, in 2009, made the decision to go to college.
Propelled by the Post-9/11 GI Bill — which gives veterans benefits for up to four academic years of tuition and fees, stipends for books and assistance with living costs — he began higher education, first starting at Pierce College, a community college in Los Angeles.
After going to Pierce College, Duschak transferred to Cal Poly as a 29-year-old junior in 2011.
“The norm for you becomes deploying overseas, being shot at or you shooting people, explosives going off, going to the bunker, and that’s your normal routine,” Duschak, now 31, said. “It gives you a different perspective on what’s important and a different level of maturity.”
Because of his firsthand experiences, Duschak cares about foreign policy, political affairs and awareness, so when he came to Cal Poly, the former special operations ranger was not prepared for the campus-wide culture shock.
As a result, he found himself getting angry about small things at Cal Poly, such as the level of noise in Robert E. Kennedy Library or how many students scrolled through Facebook during class. Duschak felt like students were taking their opportunities for granted.
His anger reached a point that he decided to seek out Cal Poly’s Counseling Services.
Tough transitions
Kathy Blau, a doctoral intern with Counseling Services, says adjustment issues such as Duschak’s are the most common presenting concern with veterans.
“You’re coming back, and you’re taking school pretty seriously, and other students might be complaining about getting up early for class,” Blau said. “When you’ve been in combat, that all seems so trivial.”
Adjustment issues include everything from social to academic struggles with transitioning.
“They can encompass anything from coming to a school where you’re significantly older than other students to having been in combat where you were always high-energy and returning to a more monotonous school life,” she said.
There is a common misconception that all veterans return from deployment with post-traumatic stress disorder, which is not the case, she said.
The exact number of veterans seeking counseling is unknown.
“All I can say is that they do come,” she said.
Club connections
While he says Counseling Services is a good resource, Duschak believes one of the most important resources on campus for veterans is the newly created Veterans Club.
Cal Poly has approximately 100 certified veterans, Office of the Registrar assistant registrar Bradford Fely said. This is the lowest proportion of student veterans out of all California State Universities.
With such a low proportion of veterans on campus, it is especially important for them to have a community, Fely said. So Fely helped Duschak connect with other veterans to form the Cal Poly Veterans Club.
Once connected, Duschak and six other veterans founded the Cal Poly Veterans Club in Winter 2012.
Coordinator of Clubs and Organizations Everette Brooks is the adviser for the Veterans Club and a veteran himself.
“Veterans need support from the university, community and other veterans,” Brooks wrote in an email. “The club provides a platform for that to happen.”
Current President of the Cal Poly Veterans Club Neil Sundberg, a kinesiology senior, was a sergeant in the army infantry and served in Iraq for a year as a team leader, paratrooper and company sniper.
Sundberg is thankful to Duschak and the other founders of the Veterans Club.
“They got the ball moving in the right direction,” Sundberg said. “It’s very challenging transitioning from a combat zone, not just to civilian life but to college life. We are a very unique population, and we have some very unique challenges, so it’s important we connect with each other.”
The club functions as a support system for student veterans, Sundberg said.
“We know what it’s like to have been in combat, so you have that teamwork and camaraderie and comfort level,” Sundberg said. “Less than 1 percent of the people in our country make the decision to selflessly sacrifice their time, energy and sometimes their lives for what they believe in, so having put on that uniform and having served our country unites us. We’re a community of student veterans.”
Although resources such as counseling and the Veterans Club help veterans transition from combat to college, there is still room for growth, such as the creation of a veterans’ center, Sundberg said.
Duschak agrees that a veterans’ center would be an amazing asset for Cal Poly veterans.
Still, Duschak thinks he will never quite fit in with the Cal Poly community.
“The truth is people are more concerned with their reality TV shows and what’s on ESPN than what’s going on with our foreign policy, how it affects them, the money we spend and the people that die,” Duschak said. “And for the people here, in my opinion, that’s not an uncommon statement.”
Below is a poem written by Ryan Duschak entitled “Hope.”
Hope
I want to paint the world with everything I have,
Except for no one can see my colors—
All my music is sad,
Joyful and beautiful; you don’t understand
To cry is to know you are alive and I am
thankful to be alive,
So sometimes, I cry.
I was such a dreamer; I don’t know how I ever aged
I’m still hypnotized by the fantasy of one love,
The white picket fence, 4 kids,
And lying to my youngest how Misty the Fish disappeared to ‘Fish Heaven’
— She’s too young for the toilet bowl truth.
White tequila, two ice cubes, a thick squeeze of lime
Cocaine crusted nostrils
Days darker than blood on a black tongue
My black gun on my lap
My thoughts grinding like gears exposed to a weak foot and new hand
Remorsefully tired,
Trying to junkyard this defective soul
But I can’t even get the devil to answer.
Salvaged through the night, then a day,
Then the season changes
And I can feel the spring nectar on my neck and
I miss the training days at Ft. Benning Georgia,
Breathing that sticky, swampy air in swallows.
I miss the Southern Belles with the sweet tea smiles,
The “yes sirs” and “ma’am’s”
I miss the women in Washington with no tans that would keep warm
like the seals that swam in the Puget Sound; with just a little bit of fat.
I miss my brothers and all our bullet proof talks
over Spades, Scrabble and Poker,
Only to be interrupted by enemy mortar rounds and the unnecessary command to,
“GET THE FUCK DOWN”
I remember how lucky we were—
He lost his leg but the rest of him lived,
He got shot through the helmet but not through the head,
He got one lung taken out and yet he still breathes,
He had the bullet scoop the calf right off of his bone
and yet he still runs on his disfigured leg,
And I am still here with all my fingers and toes,
And I am so thankful to be alive,
So sometimes, I cry.